


Without Malice Aforethought

by Ellinor



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Ableism, Blood, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Chronic Pain, Gen, Gore, Gun Violence, Slaughter Avatar Melanie King, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:40:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25685938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellinor/pseuds/Ellinor
Summary: Considering the fact that her already lackluster boss was in a coma and only three people were left in the Archives, Melanie had a lot of quiet and awful days after they stopped The Unknowing and got Elias Bouchard arrested. Unfortunately, today was not a quiet day. Fortunately, at least she wouldn't get bored while she fought for her life.
Relationships: Basira Hussain & Melanie King
Comments: 8
Kudos: 9
Collections: TMA Girls Week





	Without Malice Aforethought

**Author's Note:**

> In this fic Melanie King has chronic nerve pain, based on my own experiences. She is on no medication, and after being shot in India it made her limp come back in full and exacerbated her symptoms. I implied that as a teenager she wasn't taken seriously by doctors but have no clue how to properly tag that.

Melanie figured it would be a typical day in the archives- which is to say, irritatingly depressing and boring. Martin would spend half of the time staring off in space, the other half pretending he wasn’t crying into his cup of tea. Then Basira and Melanie would be actually running the place, researching, maybe being a bit sharp when they tell anyone coming in to make a statement to just write it down. Thankfully no one made an appointment to do so today.

The stuffy basement they worked in was annoying too, and sometimes on her lunch breaks Melanie would walk around outside, just to get some fresh air. She always had to cut them short, standing and walking for so long wore on her nerves, an old seemingly innocuous injury that had resulted in years of nerve pain down the very same leg that had been shot in India months ago.

So now she walked with her old limp, never fully stepping her right leg down. Whenever she did accidentally it sent a needle of pain up her leg to her hip, and the pain left her shoulders tense, fingernails carving deep divots in her palms. She never walked out of anyone’s way, expecting them to move, and likely roughly hit them in the shoulder with her own as she passed if they didn’t. Their fault, really, considering how heavy her limp had gotten, after years of physical therapy as a teenager got rid of it before, and now she was reluctant to bother again with it, even with the limp showing such an obvious physical weakness. But still, it helped her feel better for walking so slowly, no one was going to yell at a limping woman for being too slow, not like they had when she didn’t show her pain, and she would have to yell back.

Melanie King was well aware she wasn’t a nice person. Lingering pain in her youth with no adults aside from her father caring led to a very easily annoyed kid, who grew into an angry adult who wanted at least the basics of what the world owed her, and she had worked so hard to get that no matter what.

She tried to be a nice person, sure. She even cared, trying desperately not to rub salt into Basira’s wounds regarding Daisy or their lack of direction post-Unknowing, never bringing up Tim either, considering how upset Martin got and how guilty Basira obviously felt.

Right now, the archival staff didn’t know what they were supposed to be doing or looking for, so they were scrambling for every lead while defending their workplace from the occasional monster trying to assault the archives. No spooky friends were crawling out of the woodwork to tell them what was even going on, and Jon was-

Melanie winced mid-thought, hand tightening around her pen as she wrote on a sticky note at her desk. Jon was gone. And Melanie wasn’t going to waste time on hope for any other outcome than the one they’d already been dealt months ago. 

She stuck the note on the file, double checked all the papers were in it, and stood, idly thinking of grabbing one of the muffins left in the archive break room after she passed the file off to Basira. She dropped the file neatly on Basira’s desk, sharing a nod with her, then Melanie moved on, adjusting her square framed glasses with a sigh, thinking about muffins.

Then monsters began to rise from the floorboards, wet squishing and cracking echoing around the main archive room. Melanie turned to watch, backing up slowly. Basira stood from her chair, calm as anything, but Martin was breathing raggedly at his desk, staring in horror.

They were all spurned into action by a wet groaning roar. 

Martin ran, up and into the rest of the Institute, likely to evacuate them, knowing him and his caring streak. Basira was watching the situation, eyes darting behind her thick round glasses, backing up slowly. Melanie ran, as much as it angered her even further, as much as she felt cowardice claw down her spine, cold and slick and pitiful. 

But unlike Martin, she would come back. Her sneakers screeched harshly on the cheap linoleum of the break room, Melanie’s eyes narrowed and breath harsh in her chest, everything silent in her head for once, no annoyance or anger or even pain, just knowledge that this was the only thing to do. 

When Melanie’s pink painted nails clicked on the knife’s handle she gingerly reached for, everything rushed back. All sound was a reflection of itself turned musical, the drumbeats of hearts, the crashing cymbal of shattered bone, the deep brass of screams and roars, high whines of pain simply flutes straining to be heard over the rest of the orchestra. It was a concert of instinct, and she was stranded in the middle of the mosh pit, and she refused to be trampled into the already bloodied dirt.

Melanie raced back out into the archive turned battleground, clutching the combat knife. A large, hulking man with a multitude of misshapen limbs had thrown a chair at Basira, who rolled out of the way, ducking to avoid the vicious heavy swing of a creature full of bulging muscles. Desks were overturned, a shelf full of books was being climbed by a very disturbing amalgamation of arms and stitches. 

Her heart didn’t race, her chest contained a steady underlying beat for her march, grounding, simple. What she had to do now was simple. Defend the archive. Defend Basira.

So she did it.

Melanie slashed at the nearest Flesh monster across what passed for its face, it’s howl of pain just another voice to add to the choir of violence. She turned, already moving to the next monster, but slashed backwards again as she did, cutting a diagonal across its throat. The wet rip of flesh parted by blade became the paper the music was written on, each line another guide for notes to fall upon, resulting sounds of agony new fleeting moments of song.

She made a running jump onto one of the few upright desks, using the height advantage to kick and stun the bleeding out monster she left in her wake. The room itself was a chaotic blur of old wood and blood, and Melanie could feel her body beginning to ache as fear crept in, her heart’s steady march speeding up and frantic, and she startled at the sound of glass breaking, another disgusting Flesh creature skittering along the walls, leaving a trail of blood as it knocked down a lamp.

Everything only came back into focus when Basira let out a grunt of pain, her back hitting the wall behind her desk. The muscled monster- not the larger one, who was coordinating the attack, but still large enough to crush the ex-policewoman- was looming over Basira. Its laugh was just another addition to things Melanie wished she could scrub from her brain.

But the laugh itself, the idea of someone laughing while attacking one of Melanie’s people, of being so confident in their victory, underestimating them both so thoroughly, it grated against every part of her being, leaving fresh open wounds for her rage to seep out of, to pour straight from the artery until there was nothing left. She was not weak, weakness was its own cage, and it would not be what jailed her.

So Melanie lunged off of the desk, arms wide spread as she landed, clinging around the monster’s thick neck, digging her blade in, sawing into veiny, muscled flesh as she kicked against its back, her own body straining as she perched on its shoulders for better leverage, blood pouring hot and wrong against her hands, but her grip on her only weapon never faltered.

Basira was standing again, eyes focused, so Melanie jumped from her current enemy and scanned the battlefield for her next. The one making the orders was backing away, mouths snarling something gutteral she couldn’t understand and hoped she never did. The many armed one was gradually swinging towards them, leaping from light fixture to light fixture with a hideous grace to it, and the one crawling the walls was perched on a free-standing shelf between overturned desks that held recently seen statements, oozing blood down in thick rivulets. From its trail of blood, it had crawled up on the ceiling and dropped down, explaining one of the disturbingly wet squelches that had been lost in the cacophony of sounds.

Melanie had been living these moments devoid of pain, and in this particular moment, the only ache she felt was in her cheeks, from smiling. She huffed out a laugh, mouth opening as she breathed hard, the rasp of it just another instrument’s voice in the music of battle. She barreled forward, towards the side of the shelf standing alone in the room, throwing her weight against one side to send it toppling down. 

Melanie herself fell as well, temporarily winded, but telling from the pool of blood the shelf had crushed the monster atop it in the fall, and that was all she needed. Wheezing, she used a toppled desk to get into a crouch, watching warily as the largest monster approached, cracking knuckles in a strange series of popping sounds, jittering and strange, a xylophone of bones and the meat between them.

She was still crouched, a spring in a larger mechanism, just a single part of the ongoing violence in the room around her. Basira had finally gotten her hands on her gun, and was shooting joints in the strange many armed creature, who was shrieking in pain, however it wasn’t bleeding, and certainly wasn’t dying by the gunshots it had taken to its chest. 

“C’mon, you really think you’ll win this fight?” The large man- Jared Hopworth, Melanie realized- was coming ever closer, footsteps resonating through the ground so Melanie could feel them from the few meters away he was. 

She just kept breathing, listening for her time to join back in. All music had rests, no instrument could play every note. This was hers.

The thumping of Jared’s heavy, meaty footsteps managed to sync up with her heart, its own kind of march towards death. Melanie held her knife with both hands, feeling the pull of tendons and muscles as her grip tightened, the strain pulling at her forearms as well. 

Jared was maybe two meters in front of her now, kicking the toppled shelf aside with a crash. He was laughing, a rumble like a bag of loose bones being shaken inside him. 

Melanie realized he was foolish enough to think she was shaking with fear. Jared was very wrong, and that mistake would cost him everything. Rage had a way of pulling muscles tight like fear did, and that was what afflicted her, what always had a dominance over fear when the moment called for it.

Melanie waited until he was only a meter away before lunging, a deep battlecry ripped from her throat, quickly raising up into a scream as she plunged the knife between the dozens of ribs the avatar of Flesh must have had. Ducking under startled, grasping limbs, she weaved around, quick and sure steps that were always on beat as she slashed away fingers and claws and things she couldn’t name, her mind not able to understand what body it must have been stolen from.

The room itself was a warzone, meaning it could play as another enemy, or an ally. It had been an ally when she knew it intimately, able to keep a hidden combat knife in the break room, able to have a weapon at hand at any moment. But it revealed it could just as quickly turn into an enemy with her newfound unfamiliarity of its destruction. Melanie knew this down to her bones when she stepped on something inconsequential yet unexpected, the debris on the floor taking her equilibrium, and thus her true enemy was able to get an upper hand.

Jared grabbed her left hand, thin spindly fingers of a hand that jutted out of his body at an inconceivable angle on the human form. But Jared wasn’t human. 

Melanie found another cry shuddering from her chest without her permission, rising again into a screaming crescendo as she protected herself, using her knife to chop away anything within reach, stepping closer and closer as Jared backed further and further away, grunting and heaving in pain at every slice of her knife. 

The battlefield turned yet again, now friend as she could see what Jared could not, knowing he was approaching the one still standing desk, unable to move past it without more effort. 

So Melanie charged again, bringing her knife up in both hands as she stabbed downward, again in the chest, between some collarbones, knowing she struck a secondary heart. Rage boiled over again as it was not enough, she was not enough, so she struck again and skewered a third heart in Jared’s belly, feeling another beat stop, and finding her grin twisting into a snarl, opening her mouth, preparing to bite and claw and do anything it took to take down her enemy, when she was tackled to the floor, head cracking against wood.

The thing holding her down, digging its horde of fingers into her as it did, was the last monster who had been swinging above on the light fixtures, occupied by Basira for a time. Until, of course, it saw fit to rescue Jared with its own sacrifice, throwing itself onto the grenade as it were.

Melanie exploded into snarling and growling and frothing at the mouth, digging her teeth into the stitched smile on its chest and ripping, letting her head crack back against the floor again as it screeched in pain, flailing back away from her and letting go. She pounced, grabbing her knife from where it had skittered away before stabbing it again and again, blood splattering up and obscuring her vision as it clouded her glasses. 

She got up and turned, ready to attack again, when she saw a smiling Helen through her smudged frames, leaning against a creaking and closing door. 

“Oh dear, that was quite the battle, Melanie.” Helen clapped her hands slowly, the reverberation of it in tune with the ache in Melanie’s skull. “I wish I could’ve helped, really, but the most I can do is offer a door to clean up the undesirable guests. Granted, Flesh Avatars are not welcome guests in my corridors either, but still, bravo.” Helen smiled.

“Th-Thanks.” Melanie breathed, eyes wide. Her heart was racing now and the whirlwind instruments of battle quieted, leaving her bereft of what she could not name as the full extent of her pain made itself known.

She groaned, stumbling and letting her knife fall as her bad leg gave out, pain gnawing at nerves from her spine to her toes. Injuries she had sustained in battle as well, her left wrist bruised deep, scratches from nails, pain she could not remember earning still there, battering and awful.

“Oh dear.” Helen murmured, voice echoing around the room.

Basira’s strong arms caught Melanie before she fully lost consciousness. “I’ve got you.” Basira breathed into her ear.

Melanie had the last thought that Basira’s breath was its own music before she fell, limp and helpless, trusting her ally to protect her. Bonds forged in battle were strong, after all, especially to the bullet still whispering an infection of violence in Melanie’s body.

**Author's Note:**

> There it is! Finally did day one of TMA girls week!! Check me out on tumblr @save-the-spiral-again for more TMA stuff, or just @save-the-spiral if you would... perhaps like to see how the Wizard101 fandom fares these days.


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